21 Meter Waves, Yikes!

[Don C L]

You may have seen this before, it's an older show, but kinda interesting and pertinent here perhaps...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC8bHxgdHH4

[El Pinguino]

Couldn't find any 21 metre seas trees in my back garden but here is a 25 metre one to be going on with.... seen from a range of 25 metres.....

Didn't see any trees seas like that in the OP vid...

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Couldn't find any 21 metre seas trees in my back garden but here is a 25 metre one to be going on with.... seen from a range of 25 metres.....

Didn't see any trees seas like that in the OP vid...

Now if you were 10 meters taller (bridge height of support ship and camera height), and the confirmed height of the tree was 4 meters shorter, you’d be making a fair comparison.

[Uricanejack]

Nice video of an exciting sail.
Photos even video never quite do justice to the sea state.

I’ve seen some pretty big sea states on occasion. The North of The North Sea is a place to avoid in winter.
The Mediterranean has impressed me a couple of times.

I spent some time sailing on an OYC 72 way back in the day when I was young and didn’t know any better. I used to thourly enjoy a good blow on a vessel built and rigged cope with it. Mainly because we could go somewhere to get out of it when we had had enough.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Nice video of an exciting sail.
Photos even video never quite do justice to the sea state.

I’ve seen some pretty big sea states on occasion. The North of The North Sea is a place to avoid in winter.
The Mediterranean has impressed me a couple of times.

I spent some time sailing on an OYC 72 way back in the day when I was young and didn’t know any better. I used to thourly enjoy a good blow on a vessel built and rigged cope with it. Mainly because we could go somewhere to get out of it when we had had enough.

When the video action is frozen, the photo looks like this. The height of the camera is approximately 8ft above the waterline. The boat and camera are also heeled over significantly to starboard which also distorts the perceived wave height. If the camera was on a 3-way gimbal, it would probably present a better image of what our eyes actually see while on the boat.

Videos just don’t seem to capture the true height.

[arsenelupiga]

Originally Posted by Don C L

You may have seen this before, it's an older show, but kinda interesting and pertinent here perhaps...

yeah, something is what i have seen. One sees large wave from distance, as it passes you then you really see big one ie deeper and higher and steeper. And then third one. Second one is unstable and breaks. It was not even close to 3 x significant height though. We dodged these by reaching at speed. If AP drives you to impact zone, one changes direction to windward to avoid.

To be clear what we had was not serious, but was excellent intro to storm tactics. I had 48 hours to observe non stop the action. This was by far largest seas we experienced.

Although when i experimented by going downwind we started surfing far beyond my comfort level. So maybe boats that use this tactics would see this as more serious 'storm'. By deploying drogue, forces on boat increase significantly if one gets that high wave.


happy sailing